OPTIMIZING WHEAT MANAGEMENT TOWARDS CLIMATE CHANGE: A GENETIC ALGORITHMS APPROACH

摘要

Climate change will alter crop growth conditions in Europe.rnTherefore, farmers are expected to change their managementrndecisions in order to minimize negative climaternchange impacts on their income and their production risks.rnIn this paper, we optimize management options in winterwheatrnproduction in western Switzerland. We maximizerna farmer’s utility through the optimization of nitrogen fertilizationrnand irrigation strategies under different climaternscenarios. To this end, the crop growth model CropSyst isrnlinked with a developed economic decision that takes profitrnmargin and production risk into account and agriculturalrnmanagement decisions are optimized using genetic algorithmsrn(GAs). Our results show that under future expectedrnclimate conditions less nitrogen fertilizer is used and fertilizationrnevents take earlier place. Irrigation, however, isrneven under a climate change scenario for the period 2080–rn2099 not a profitable adaptation measure. Although winterwheatrnyields decrease under future climate conditionsrnand the chosen optimal management decisions up to 20%,rnthe farmers’ financial losses remain in all climate changernscenarios under 15%. This affirms that negative climaternchange impacts on wheat production in Switzerland arernrather small if possible adaptation measures in the agriculturalrnmanagement are taken into account.